Parish programs spur conversation on suicide awareness, prevention

The Breaking the Silence event, sponsored by Youth Pastors Anonymous and held at Holy Family Church in Nashville, featured panelists talking about their own experiences with suicide attempts, above photo, and how to help friends and family who are struggling. The event drew several hundred people from churches throughout the area and was designed to encourage people to start talking about suicide and how to prevent it. Photos by Andy Telli

Earlier this year, Lisa Vegors, the director of youth ministry at Holy Family Church in Brentwood, joined her parish community in mourning the death by suicide of a high school student. Many of the teens in her youth ministry program knew the student and were looking for help grieving the loss and understanding their friend’s decision.

Teen suicide is an issue that Vegors has seen become more prevalent during the 17 years she has been involved in youth ministry.

“I end up dealing with one or two kids who are contemplating or even attempted (suicide) every year,” Vegors said. “I feel like it’s been increasing, dramatically increasing.”

Data shows that the suicide rate among teens and young adults has slowly but steadily increased in recent years. While the 45-54 year old white male demographic is actually at the highest risk for suicide, the younger victims often draw the most attention and alarm, according to the Tennessee Suicide Prevention Network.

In the days after the teen’s funeral, Vegors made a decision. “We’ve got to do something.” So she and Holy Family pastor Father Joe McMahon organized a program designed for the parish’s teens to talk about suicide, to let them know they can help their friends who are struggling.

Vegors and Father McMahon shared their own experiences with people they knew who had died by suicide, and the teens heard from someone who had considered suicide as a teenager. There was also a question-and-answer session, and time for prayer.

Those attending Breaking the Silence hold candles during a prayer.

About 125 teens attended the session, including many who were not Catholic, Vegors said. “They wanted to hear about this subject because they had someone they all knew. … They were thankful to have an opportunity to grieve together and have some kind of symbol of action for this family and this problem that they know is clear for their demographic.”

About 14 young people die by suicide every day in the United States. In Tennessee in 2014, 115 people between the ages of 10 to 24 died by suicide, according to the Tennessee Suicide Prevention Network.

Learning more about the scope of the problem, Vegors and Father McMahon wanted to do more.

Breaking the Silence

Vegors approached members of the group “Youth Pastors Anonymous,” made up of fellow youth ministers, to ask for help. She told her colleagues, “We’ve got to do something. At least start a conversation, at least among us, that’s not a response to losing a kid.”

The result was an event in September called “Breaking the Silence.”

“We were trying to break the silence that surrounds this topic of suicide,” Vegors said. “It’s surrounded by a shroud of shame.”

The event included talks from counselors and people who have contemplated or attempted suicide themselves or people who lost family members to suicide. It was open to both teenagers and adults.

Holy Family parishioner Bob Forster was one member of the panel discussion who shared his personal experience with suicide. A burly, heart-on-his-sleeve kind of guy, he spoke forthrightly about struggling with suicidal thoughts as a teenager, coping with his brother’s suicide, and helping his own daughter seek treatment for depression. “I feel compelled to share it not because it’s easy, but because it’s important,” he said.

Growing up with an alcoholic and distant father, Forster said he would do anything to try to gain his father’s love. This included excelling in the classroom and in extracurricular activities. He was inducted into the National Honor Society, earned his Eagle Scout, led his Father Ryan High School football team to a state championship, and earned a college scholarship.

Underneath the overachieving exterior, however, Forster was suffering, seriously questioning his self-worth, even contemplating different ways to kill himself. “When you’re striving for perfection you’re doomed because it’s unachievable,” he said. “I felt like a disappointment.”

Forster is still not quite sure, decades later, how he pulled through those tough times. “In the ’70s, who do you talk to?” he said. “You keep it pent up inside.”

When Forster’s brother Paul, a talented artist, took his own life in 2009, leaving behind a wife and seven children, Bob immediately wondered, “Why didn’t I do more when we were growing up?” But then reminds himself, “I think we were both drowning.”

During the final years of Paul Forster’s life, he reconnected with family members he had distanced himself from, and grew closer than ever with his brother. Yet Bob Forster did not realize the extent of his brother’s pain. “Suicide is not just a loss,” Forster said, but an event that causes family members and loved ones to question, judge, and even blame themselves. “You start thinking, ‘what if …’”

Today, Forster is more interested in healing than blaming. Forster re-built his relationship long ago with his father, who underwent treatment for alcoholism in the 1980s. Their relationship today, Forster said, is “tremendous,” and they see each other often.

Forster, an active member of his parish, a veteran of the Cursillo retreat program, and a close reader of Scripture, credits his faith for helping him through the dark times in his life.

‘Faith can be a resource’

Having a strong faith community to gather with and draw support from can be an important solace to people grieving a suicide, said Colleen Halfmann, a counselor-in-residence at Holy Family Church.

“It almost always comes as a shock to people,” Halfmann said of a suicide in the community. “There can be a certain amount of guilt if they know the person, ‘Gosh why didn’t I know? Why didn’t I look harder?’

“I think that’s where having our faith community can be so important to come together and offer support in a time like that,” said Halfmann. “To offer that pain to God and to trust in his infinite love and mercy.”

As a counselor-in-residence, Halfmann is available to parishioners at a discounted rate and also is helping with education and prevention programs at the parish on various topics including suicide. “Education is the foundational piece in helping people deal with suicide. Unfortunately, it’s a common problem in our country,” she said, noting that Williamson County, where the parish is located, has the second highest suicide rate of any county in Tennessee.

“In general, I see kids are under a lot of pressure, whether it’s to succeed in school or sports,” Halfmann said. And with social media “people are in constant engagement and trying to put their best foot forward.”

When teens see all the photos their friends post on social media showing how happy and accomplished they are, it can create feelings of inadequacy, Vegors said. “It heightens that comparison that we all naturally do as humans.”

“Social media puts a lot of emphasis on the external aspects” of a person’s life, Halfmann said. Teens end up comparing themselves to what they see on social media and can feel they’re not keeping up with their friends. “We forget a lot of times people only show the best parts of their life on social media. It can present this false perception,” Halfmann said.

The focus of Halfmann’s work, she said, is trying to help people know the signs that a person might be considering suicide. “That includes the teen themselves. They are more likely to encounter someone showing those signs than myself or another adult would.”

Some of the signs someone might be considering suicide include: talk of what would happen if they were gone; a sense of hopelessness; withdrawing socially; writing letters that sound like a goodbye.

It’s important for teens and adults to realize they don’t have to help their friend or child by themselves. They can get help from counselors or a help line, Halfmann said. “You want to be a support system … but you don’t want to take on more than you can handle,” she said.

“From a Catholic perspective, our faith can be a resource,” Halfmann said. “A strong faith and a positive outlook on life can be a strong deterrent to suicide as well as the community that comes with that faith.”